The Passover in the Holy Family (For a Drawing)

title  See WMR's note (1911). DGR's note to the poem in the 1870 Poems explicates its essential narrative features: “The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of blood from which Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel. Joseph has brought the lamb and Elisabeth lights the pyre. The shoes which John fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is gathering form part of the ritual.”

1-2  That is to say, the feast of the Passover prefigures the sacrificial death of Jesus, the event that brings about the new day of the Messiah also prefigured in the Passover.

2-4  Exodus 12: 7, 11, 22

12  Zacharias is the father of St. John the Baptist.

12-13  John 1: 27